


Day 5: Ran Out of Water

by whatsanapocalae



Series: Inktober 2018 [3]
Category: Deus Ex (Video Games), Deus Ex: Human Revolution
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Hurt/Comfort, Inktober, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Showers, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-06
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-07-25 23:02:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16207499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whatsanapocalae/pseuds/whatsanapocalae
Summary: Jensen is having a hard time being back in the world of the living after Panchea. I have only played HR so I don't know how accurate this is.Whenever I skip a day in Inktober, it's just that I wrote an original piece that day instead of fic. You can read the original ones on whatsanwritepocalae.tumblr.com





	Day 5: Ran Out of Water

Cold. 

Even with the heat on all the way his bones felt cold, what was left of them, anyway. He spent his time in sweaters, even though it was June and the violence erupting in Detroit was enough to light a fire in most people’s nerves. He felt numb to it all. The bed was filled with every blanket he could find, none of them his blankets, the bed not his either. His things were still in boxes, still taped up, saved when his apartment was being taken back, when no one thought he was coming back. 

His arms were heavy at his sides, his fingers stiff and lacking in the elegance that he was known for, even after the incident. His legs were heavy too and it was hard for him to get out of bed, into sweats, into long socks that would have warmed him if he had any flesh left to his feet. His head felt full of fog and was full of worse things, whenever he closed his eyes. 

The windows cracking, water streaming in through them. He had run, as fast as he could, faster than that, trying to get up and out. There were innocents, so many of them, trapped in insanity, trapped in the familiarity of one another. None of them could make it to the surface. He couldn’t make it to the surface. The water was ice and heavy pressure and the building sank and cracked around him. 

He kept his eyes open as much as he could, his shades up. He didn’t want anyone to see the darkness around them, how little he’d been sleeping. He needed the blankets for warmth but the weight of them was too much like a hundred miles of ocean water. Another body beside his helped, but it was rare that Francis slept at all, nevertheless in the same bed as him. He didn’t complain. He didn’t want Francis to know that he was close to cracking, that half of his augs wouldn’t turn on, that he hadn’t gotten his infolink fixed. 

He didn’t want the people at the LIMB clinic to touch him. 

He was afraid of anyone touching him, that the cracks would spread and the water would rush out of him. He knew that if they said something, the right thing, while touching him, he would shatter and never come back together. 

He dragged himself to his feet. He could smell coffee, coming from the kitchen. He could smell cigarettes, which he could smoke but never be pleased by again. He could hear the whirring of machines, Francis’ instead of his own. It had become so quiet with so many of them dead in him. 

He’d made it to the surface, dragged the radio out of the burning pieces of the helicopter. Once Panchea was at the bottom of the ocean there would be no landmark for anyone to find him by. He called anyway. The water was at his waist, lapping. His augs kicked into overdrive, even the ones that he rarely used kicking in, buzzing, bringing up his core temperature. He was invisible but that didn’t matter, he was sprinting and that was good, if he fell, plummeted into the depths, the Icarus would at least slow his decent. 

He shivered. He wanted to be there, to wrap his arms around Francis’ waist, to nuzzle his nose into his long hair. He wanted to touch him, be strong for him, be all of the things he’d come to expect in their short relationship. 

He was distant now. He was cold. He didn’t let Francis in. He had his firewall raised and there were proxies and securities and nothing that would let him in. He’d made it too well in the months that he’d been dead. 

He went into the bathroom. He didn’t look in the mirror. He didn’t even turn on the fan as he turned on the water, scalding hot. He was too cold to wait for it to heat up all the way, climbing in and letting the lukewarm water permeate the creasing in his fake skin, blacker than frostbite. It ran over his puckered scar tissue, making him feel even less like he belonged in his body than before. 

The water warmed and he breathed, expecting to see his own breath. The water wasn’t coming from the walls, wasn’t breaking through. It was coming from the shower head, and it was soothing the tension in him. It was hot and it was breaking through, not reaching his bones but getting close. 

He closed his eyes, leaning against the wall to the shower, and tried to think of something, anything other than Panchea and what it had done to him. He wanted to be his own person, but he hadn’t been that even before he’d made his choice in the middle of nowhere. He had someone else’s name stamped on his forehead to prove that. He wanted to take everything that had happened to him, ever since he’d started working for Sarif, wrap it in a ball and throw it aside. 

There was a knock on the door and he swallowed that rage, apologizing in his head for even thinking of it. If none of it had happened, he would probably still be with Megan, completely blind to her betrayal, how she’d been using him from the start. If none of it had happened, he would never have met Francis and, if things hadn’t gone the way they had, he doubted he’d of ever find his way through his thick skin. 

He was too cold. He turned up the heat. 

“Breakfast is ready,” Francis called out from the hall. 

He’d been in there long enough for Francis to make breakfast. That was a bad sign. Francis didn’t like to cook and he was terrible at it. He must have been waiting a while. 

He heard the door open. He couldn’t see through the steam. Francis turned on the fan though, venting away the cloud of warmth that he was making. “It’s pancakes. I even used a mix and they came out lumpy and half burnt.”

He didn’t respond. He felt like he was only half listening. Francis deserved more than that. Francis deserved more than the icicle that had been found half dead in a lifeboat. 

“You still have any hot water in there?” Francis’ voice was closer. 

He turned up the heat again, getting a few more moments of boiling heat. It was fading though, leaving him cold once more, letting the water break down the waters and the pipes, flooding the floor around his feet, climbing up his legs. 

“No,” he finally said. His voice was so rough, so quiet. 

“Are you going to come out?” There was a bit of annoyance in Francis’ mouth but he was trying to hide it, to be supportive. He wished that he didn’t need such care. 

He shrugged, even though there was no way Francis saw it and turned off the water. He was shivering all over again. He just wanted to go back to bed. He just wanted it to be a year ago. 

The curtain parted was pushed to the side and he was greeted by Francis’ sleep deprived face, his eyes turned down, so as to give him so privacy. He held a towel in his hands, a different one then what hung on the peg, and his pajama bottoms were hiked up as high as they could go. 

He climbed into the shower, fully dressed, and unraveled the knot of the towel, wrapping it around Jensen. He didn’t know when he’d gotten so weak, so pathetic that Francis felt he had to mother him, but the towel was hot from the dryer and Jensen could do nothing but sigh into it, wrap it around himself more tightly. 

Following the towel came Francis’ arms, wrapping around his waist a hand coming up to cover Jensen’s heart. He was warm too and clinging, pulling Jensen flush against his chest. Jensen let out a breath that he’d been holding for weeks, ever since he’d come back here, his shoulders drooped and he let Francis just be there, with him. He hadn’t even let Francis touch him since he’d returned. He hadn’t realize how much he’d missed it. 

The cracks didn’t spread. 

“I’m here, you know,” Francis’ voice was soft against the knot in his spine, the base of his neck, “I’m not going anywhere.”

Jensen closed his eyes, letting Francis’ heat permeate his bones. He’d thought he needed his firewall, but Francis knew how to find the weaknesses in those, and had found his way through. 

Jensen felt warm.


End file.
